


Someplace Later

by zonophone



Category: orange - 高野苺 | Takano Ichigo
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 08:04:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3521708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zonophone/pseuds/zonophone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been years since you mailed the letter and who knows where, when, the you in the past is now. What became of the smile on her Kakeru.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Someplace Later

**Author's Note:**

> same warnings as for the manga apply, especially regarding suicide

Kakeru’s smile is everywhere.  
Even when you think you don’t remember.  
It’s a lie, of course. You remember always.  
It’s your child’s first day at school. You wave at him as he walks inside with his new classmates. Kakeru’s smile is there. In your smile. In the way your kid seems faraway, perhaps sad to part. In the way Hiroto clicks away at his camera, like his father.  
Sometimes you ride the train to visit your mother and Kakeru walks past you in the midst of the crowd, brushes his hand against yours and gets lost in a sea of long coats and school bags. He smiles. He always smiles when he looks at you.  
Your child is coming back from school, it’s his second year of elementary, shows you the grades he got in a paper. You smile at him and you’re not surprised to see Kakeru’s smile in your trembling hands, in your child’s sincere glee.  
You look at Kakeru and say nothing and Kakeru smiles at you when your child asks if his goldfish can hear him say 'Thank you' even though it's dead. He's gone when you tell your son that no, he should've said 'Thank you' when the fish was still alive.  
Other times, never often, his smile ghosts over your hands when you touch Hiroto and you pull them back, even if Hiroto says it’s okay, and you believe him.  
You skirt around mentioning the letters with your husband and everyone else now like you were all wounds ready to open up again at the mere mention of that smile, even if it lives with you, everywhere. A part of you, and all of them, know that if anything was done, if any saving took place, then Hiroto sacrificed parts of himself. Made a cushion of his future to break Kakeru’s fall.  
There’s no smile in this thought.

It’s been years since you sent the letter. Who knows how these things work. Who knows where the you in the past is now, when, at what point in time, if time really works that way, in a line. You prefer spirals. You wonder if she’ll grow up to have to send another letter, different, but essentially the same. The smile is there, at least. There are other chances, too.  
Unlike you, she must see her Kakeru’s smiles as stained with sadness and regret. You had the privilege of ignorance, of pretending he smiled and nothing hid behind it.  
It was years before his smile took on different meanings.  
It was only in memory that they changed.  
The one he offered when you didn’t give him chocolates on Valentine’s Day.  
The one he offered when you didn’t say anything about Ueda.  
It must’ve changed, now, for her.  
You wonder if she was confident enough to change things.  
If you ever were.

You wonder if she ever got to fall in love with him, too. Because if she stopped him that day, and his mother lived, maybe she never got to be as close to him as you were.

You want to think that in every world possible, save for one, even if only for a second, or a whole lifetime, you are with him. As close as you were and as close as it is possible for two people. Two people like you and him. In all of them, but the one.  
You don’t stop to wonder why Hiroto isn’t in all of them, all the possibilities you can imagine. You know you didn’t notice him at all when Kakeru smiled. But you didn’t really notice Kakeru’s smile, either. You told yourself to thank Hiroto, but nothing would be enough.

In the end that’s something you don’t know you know. Nothing would be enough.

You stop Kakeru from coming with you and it doesn’t stop his mother from wishing to die (and you imagine many nights and many days and many ways in which she can stop breathing and the many ways in which he can blame himself and no way in which you could save her). If you save Kakeru by loving him with all your heart, by allowing Hiroto to step back, to lie to you, to lie to himself, by having all of you, the five pairs of hands, break his fall, cushioned by your dreams and futures and days he never got to live, once and again, once again, it will never be enough.

There’s that one world in which his mother doesn’t die that day. Doesn’t die because he never notices you like curry buns, because he never offers to trade with you, because he never starts calling you Naho. And the burden of being constantly on her watch makes his smile unbearable. He doesn’t join a club because she needs him, and his smile is only directed at you in passing, when he asks for a pencil you give him your eraser and when he returns it there is no note, and you never once find it odd, you never once see loneliness encroaching around a Kakeru who never made friends with you, any of you, whose fragile mother reaches her hand out to him while giving up.  
You can’t save him then.  
The only thing that changes is your regret. You never knew him, so you feel none. Maybe some vague desire, you’ve seen it happen to others, wondering what if they had been closer, what if they'd been able to do something, what if, what if, but aside from that, you weren’t close enough. His smile is nowhere, in that world, he never asks if you like someone, it is nowhere and it still seems to you to be sincere.  
You have that privilege at least.

That’s what you’re doing now, in any case. Some vague scenario riddled with all the what ifs that weigh on your heart. Your hands heavy with his smile and your regrets run through your child’s hair and you wonder if the weight would be enough to crush him, to crush Hiroto, and yourself. You force yourself to keep running your heavy hands through your son's hair because you feel you don’t deserve it. This hair and this face, like Hiroto’s: alive. His smiles have no weight, no regrets, and they get stained by everything you carry, tainted whenever your cursed hands touch their skin. Maybe this is what Kakeru felt when he never spoke of love, to you. Maybe this is what he felt when he smiled and didn’t say a thing.  
You wonder who would save you.

In the end that’s something you don’t know you know.  
Kakeru’s smile is your smile. Everywhere you go. It’s your smile you see, the same as his.  
There isn’t anyone who can save you. There isn’t anyone who can save him.  
Except you.  
Except him.


End file.
